Bill Carden and Friends: Part 2

ORAL HISTORY OF BILL CARDEN, CARL AND IDA HAGAMAN, AND MARY ARGO
Interviewed by Denis Kiely
March 19, 1999
MR. KIELY: This is March 19, 1999. I’m Denis Kiely and we’re here at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the gates in Oak Ridge at the American Museum of Science and Energy and I have some former residents with me who I’d like to, if they would, introduce themselves.
MR. CARDEN: I’m Bill Carden. I came to Oak Ridge in 1945, December 15, with my mother and dad and I started in Oak Ridge school system in January of 1946. My father was a welder and worked at the K-25 powerhouse at the time. My mother was a housewife. And I certainly enjoyed being in Oak Ridge, then and even today. It’s a very nice city.
MR. HAGAMAN: Carl Hagaman, Jr. Claim to fame is the longest in tenure, earliest resident of Oak Ridge. My father was able to rent the first trailer that was rented to anyone. There were no houses. We came in July 3, 1943. There was no one else here. There was one family that was allowed to come in the night before – illegally – because they had a sick child and were living on the highway and they talked their way in – the Hankins’ family. The 4th of July, my entertainment was walking up to – let’s see what’s there now - the entrance to the hospital off the Turnpike – Dad’s field office was up there it was with Stone and Webster. I walked up there so I could ride home with him on the Fourth of July. There was nobody here. The first house, I guess, was occupied maybe 3 or 4 weeks later up on Florida Avenue. We thought we were coming here to spend the summer, but it’s been a long summer. Very enjoyable, been good to us, we’ve been in the electrical contracting business practically the whole time. Dad started his company back in 1944, and I continued with him, and am closing it out just now.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I’m Ida Hagaman. I was Ida Saaphoff when I came here. We came to Oak Ridge in August of 1943. My father had been down here since, well sometime in the fall of 1942, and Mother and I came down to Oak Ridge when school was out, or came to Knoxville after school was out, in June of ’43. And there were no houses, as Carl said, so we lived in Knoxville until we were able to get a house in Oak Ridge which was August of ’43.
MRS. ARGO: I’m Mary Darnell Argo. I came here in the summer of 1945. Started Oak Ridge High School in September of 1945. We came here right after my brother was killed in the war. He was 19. We moved into a “D” house which was like heaven to us, because we’d been living in one room, moving around with the government working for the war effort, and Oak Ridge residence was fantastic. It was wonderful time to be a teenager.
MR. HAGAMAN: The first day of school, October 1. School starting was delayed because there was a fire there. They started school the first day of October and Ida and I were among the first 83 there. Of course, we went our separate ways.
MR. KIELY: What was it like going to school here in Oak Ridge?
MR. HAGAMAN: It was rather basic at that time. A lady named, I believe, Cosgrove was physical education teacher for the girls and she would come out in the hallway and blow a whistle to change classes, because the bell system wasn’t there. And they were out in the hallway, working on the lockers, and all this sort, and it was just a mess. But we had some of the finest teachers in the world. They recruited them from all around the area. We were exposed to a real good education.
MRS. ARGO: What was it Miss Morris said about, if some person came into the room and said his name was something else, and you didn’t question him and because of the job his father had.
MR. HAGAMAN: One came into the room and introduced himself, and I can’t remember who it was, and she called him by his first name and said, “I’m glad to meet you,” and it was the Governor.
MR. KIELY: So even when you went to school you were very conscious of security.
MRS. ARGO: You didn’t talk about your parent’s jobs really.
MRS. HAGAMAN: The very first school newspaper we had didn’t have any last names in it because they didn’t want any information to leak out of the people who were here.
MR. CARDEN: Then when you met some of the other students you learned their names, but you very seldom ever, if ever asked what did your father do, or what does your father do here, or what does your mother do here.
MRS. ARGO: You just asked where they came from.
MR. CARDEN: Exactly. And you just became accustomed to doing that. It wasn’t very hard. A lot of people think it must be hard not to ask that. We got used to it. And sometimes we might ask later on what kind of house they lived in.
MRS. ARGO: Way back then it didn’t matter.
MR. CARDEN: Then it really didn’t matter.
MRS. HAGAMAN: There were no cliques, no one knew anyone else, everyone was new and it was a good way to start, and everybody had to work together.
MR. HAGAMAN: It was a melting pot. My high school class, I went to summer school and graduated a year early, graduated in ‘45. My class had 36 states and 3 foreign countries that were in it. In a class of only 130 or something like that. And of course, the school grew after that. Larger classes--
MR. KIELY: What were the early facilities like in terms of the school building and--
MR. HAGAMAN: The building was brand new – it was nice, but it wasn’t finished.
MRS. HAGAMAN: The fire was in the auditorium and I don’t know how it started but--
MR. HAGAMAN: Lightning.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Lightning. My father came home that night and said that school would not start the next week because of the fire in the building and it was a brand new. We walked into a brand new building, it was a nice building, spacious and adequate for the needs of that time, but of course, we outgrew it in a hurry.
MR. HAGAMAN: – well equipped. I remember in Kentucky they came around and took all the surplus office machines from the schools for projects like this. And we go into typing class with all new typewriters and adding machines. That wasn’t bad. Chemistry lab was equipped. It was first class.
MR. KIELY: What about any memories of the staff, teachers, principals?
MR. HAGAMAN: Lots of them.
MRS. ARGO: I think Mrs. Martin was one of the teachers that everyone was closest to, don’t you for some reason.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Not particularly back then, we became closer.
MR. HAGAMAN: Oh yeah, I walked out of her class one day while she was teaching Algebra. She came out into the hall and admitted she was wrong. “Please come back in, but I can’t let you talk to me like that in class.” She was a doll. But she also got Ida and me together after our other marriages. Ida was widowed and I was divorced and she kept after us, about the availability of the other when Ida moved back to town. And quizzed me, “Have you called Ida yet?” I accused her…we just happened to run into her on our 10th anniversary, and I said, “See what you did to me?” And she said, “When are you going to do something nice for me like that?”
MRS. ARGO: And Francelle Buckminster still lives in Oak Ridge, one of our teachers. She thinks we’re all so nice. She doesn’t remember too well.
MR. CARDEN: Teachers were really, I think the teachers were really genuine to the students. They would come from different schools too so they had a new experience coming--
MRS. ARGO: So they could understand our silly ways –
MR. HAGAMAN: And they provided employment for those that wanted to work at the plants in the summer.
MR. KIELY: Summer jobs available, the teachers--
MR. HAGAMAN: And any kid that wanted to work, could.
MRS. HAGAMAN: And did you tell him how fast the government houses--
MR. HAGAMAN: Some part time job, I worked at the post office for a year and a half and averaged $42 a week, part time.
MR. KIELY: And there was a prank involving a fictitious student?
MR. HAGAMAN: Harry Pruitt
MR. KIELY: Tell us a little about Harry Pruitt
MRS. ARGO: Well, Harry Pruitt answered the roll call and every time we had a substitute teacher his name got on the list, and his name was called out and some boy would answer for him, and…he still exists, I think he comes to all our reunions.
MRS. HAGAMAN: We have pictures of him, don’t we?
MRS. ARGO: Yes.
MR. CARDEN: What did you say, he has 13 kids now.
MR. HAGAMAN: Yeah, he and Harriet have 13 children now.
MRS. ARGO: I thought he had more than that. I think he had one child for every year we were out of school.
MR. CARDEN: I guess that was it.
MR. KIELY: Well, did anyone ever catch on to the fact that Harry was not really there?
MR. HAGAMAN: Oh yes, eventually they did, but Mr. Kennedy pulled the best one when he told us that we had lost a member of our class, and they were saddened by it. Mr. Pruitt would no longer be with us.
MR. CARDEN: We have these reunions, this day and time, and we send Harry Pruitt an invitation to come to the reunions.
MRS. ARGO: Well, don’t we put their address down as the address of the White House?
MR. HAGAMAN: Yes.
MRS. ARGO: And the White House has been known to get these letters and send them back saying, he doesn’t live here.
MR. KIELY: You had earlier mentioned the opening of the City for the residents to come in. What were the houses like, even before the houses? You were saying earlier that you lived in the first trailer.
MR. HAGAMAN: Well, they were rather basic. They had no bathrooms or running water. You had a utility house or a bathhouse that had showers and laundry facilities and bathrooms. They had primarily to start with, they had gasoline cook units, like a camp stove, and kerosene heaters. And they burned a few of them. And they went quickly with the gasoline and kerosene. But it was primitive.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Tell them about your mother’s washing machine.
MR. HAGAMAN: Oh Mother had a new washing machine which she wouldn’t bring down here. So Dad through a friend in Kentucky bought an old square tub Maytag and brought it down, and people kept trying to borrow it and this that and the other, and she started renting it at 50 cents an hour. And believe it or not, people would go down at night and use it without paying. So Dad, being in the electrical business, made up a twist lock receptacle cord which you had to have an adaptor to use it. And she would keep that at the house and people would come and she actually reserved time on that machine. It wore out; I learned to be a real Maytag mechanic. It even wore the tub out. And I didn’t know that was possible. But we replaced everything on that machine including the tub. And Mom, with 50 cents an hour, she was rolling in cash.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I was going to tell about the houses that were built out here. We lived in Knoxville in the summer until our house was ready. My Mother, Dad, and I were the only ones down here, so we were assigned an “A” house which was the smallest of the cemesto houses. It had kitchen and a living room that had a little dining L on the side, 2 bedrooms and a bath. Very adequate for 3 people. But then my sisters came home and a friend came along with them and we ended out camping out practically in the house. The houses were nice, they were furnished with good electric stoves and refrigerators, but the floors weren’t finished. It was just green lumber, and the lumber dried up and a lot of people refinished them. Would you put wood filler on the floors?
MR. HAGAMAN: They were hardwood floors. It just wasn’t dry enough. A lot of them were nice.
MRS. HAGAMAN: We had central heat, coal furnace. The furnace room was a little room off the side of the kitchen and had the furnace was in it and a little section of it was walled off for the coal. And the trucks could come up to the house and put the coal in the coal bin from the outside. They didn’t have to come in. And then there was a door on the inside where you could scoop the coal out.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Houses all had their back door on the street side and their front door in the center with the trees and the woods between the two streets. I came home from school one day and the house was black, floors walls cabinets were jet black. We had had coal delivered that day and the door came off and really got all through the house. Was a mess.
MR. HAGAMAN: In other types of housing they had coal bins at the end of the walk up the street. The reason for the back door entry was the coal bin – they delivered coal that way. Earlier there was no mail delivery anyway, so that wasn’t important. But on the others – up on Wade Lane where the folks lived - they had coal bins on either side of the wooden walkway going down to the houses. And they dumped the coal there and the people carried it.
MR. CARDEN: That’s the kind of house we lived in - was called a “T” duplex and the entrances were on the ends of the house, one entrance on each end, and it had a Warm Morning heater type, a little coal stove, for the heat of the house. It had a shower and very limited, and three bedrooms so it was adequate. It had a beautiful view of the mountains behind us. You were talking about the coal bins, they were outside of these houses and you just walked down the boardwalk and filled up your coal scuttle, and take it back on into the house.
MRS. HAGAMAN: There were several different types of cemesto houses, the A house was the smallest, and the B house which also had two bedrooms but it had a larger living room and a larger dining L off the living room. And I guess the coal room, furnace room, was larger too. And then there was a C house that was kind of an L shaped house, that had three bedrooms and the dining room was in the living room too. And the D house had three bedrooms too but it was a long house, and had a separate dining room, nice entrance hall.
MR. HAGAMAN: Some of the B2s had two bathrooms.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Yeah.
MR. HAGAMAN: But to give you an idea, the A house she was talking about, including utilities – water, electricity and coal, - was like $30 a month, which was cheap by 1943 standards, because a lot of people raised Cain about the utilities, went around and put electric meters on the houses. Had to pay for that stuff.
MR. KIELY: Mary, you lived in a D?
MRS. ARGO: We lived in a D house.
MR. KIELY: And what was that like. Where did you live before?
MRS. ARGO: Well, Missouri, Indiana, Alabama, Illinois-
MR. KIELY: So you were moved by the government on a regular basis?
MRS. ARGO: Yes, and then when my brother got killed my stepdad just quit his job. He was working for DuPont and he just walked off the job. And then, they sent us to Oak Ridge and he said, well he didn’t want to stay here, and so he left again, and they brought us back. And I’m glad they did. They told us they’d take our shoes and throw them away and we’d never be able to leave. And we haven’t.
MR. KIELY: How was the D house?
MRS. ARGO: Oh, it was a ranch style house, three bedrooms and a big living room, and kitchen. To us, it was like a castle. It was so big and we were used to renting one bedroom.
MR. HAGAMAN: 1638 square feet I think it was.
MR. KIELY: Oh my that is--
MRS. ARGO: It had one bathroom but it had another room that was empty to build another bathroom. But they didn’t build it in ours, but they did in some, I understand. But it was really nice.
MR. CARDEN: Did some of the F houses, which was the largest house we had, did they have four bedrooms in any of those?
MR. HAGAMAN: I don’t think so.
MR. CARDEN: Just only three bedrooms.
MRS. ARGO: They faced like a C.
MR. HAGAMAN: Only four bedrooms were in some of the apartments, like K’s or L’s or something like that. Some of those had four. I don’t remember which ones.
MR. HAGAMAN: But they had flattops, but they built cemestos so fast, we would walk from Midtown, the trailer park, up to Jackson Square each night just to have something to do. Eventually they opened up the theater up there and we would go to the theater and see the same thing every now and then. You’d walk up Pennsylvania Avenue, which was one of the main roads through there, we’d walk up Pennsylvania until we got to Tennessee and there would be nothing, and the next night there would be foundations for maybe 100 houses. The next day there was houses on those foundations. A lot of them…they just built them overnight. They grew up. I don’t know how many people they had, but they had about 4 different contractors in here building houses. They turned them out just like chickens laying eggs. Then they started bringing in the flattops from Indiana. A trailer manufacturer started building them, bringing them in in sections and set them up on wood supports. Other than that in housing, that and the dormitories, that’s all we had and we got up to a populations of 83,000 or so in a hurry.
MR. CARDEN: Didn’t they bring some of the housing from other projects too?
MR. HAGAMAN: Could be.
MR. CARDEN: I thought some things came from Fontana. Could be, trailers, some of the flattops, prefab that they had over there.
MRS. ARGO: The nice thing was the way they named the streets. Were like Pennsylvania, all the streets off Pennsylvania, started with P, Florida everything was an F. It was easy to find where you wanted to go.
MR. HAGAMAN: They set up in ‘47 or ‘48 a production line down on what was then West Division Road, now Lafayette Drive and build a house similar to a flat top. This was right next to my dad’s office. The general contractor was John A. Johnson and they built like 500 of these things and set them up all over and then they got a contract to build 250 more so they were building houses here – that was later, that was in ‘44. Housing was a big part of Roane-Anderson was set up strictly to manage concessions, housing, and entertainment. They ran the beer halls, the bowling alleys, they furnished. They did a lot to keep people here, keep people happy. As she said, take their shoes…
MR. KIELY: So as young people what did you do to entertain yourselves?
MR. CARDEN: Some of the theaters I understand were open all night long. Central Cafeteria was open, recreation halls, swimming pools, tennis. Largest swimming pool in the south for the first two or three years.
MR. HAGAMAN: And that water was ice cold – spring fed. I quit going in when I got three leeches on me.
MRS. HAGAMAN: And that water was ice cold.
MR. CARDEN: It was spring fed. The spring is still there, of course.
MR. HAGAMAN: There were tennis court dances. Bill Pollack who’s famous started to play music at the tennis courts for adults and kids, but it was all sorts of organized sports.
MR. CARDEN: Bowling alleys here and available and Central Recreation Hall for the high school kids which I guess became the Wildcat Den at the time.
MRS. ARGO: Had huge dance halls.
MR. CARDEN: Oh yes!
MR. KIELY: The dance, was it real popular?
MRS. ARGO: Yes, I don’t think we did that much dancing as kids, but I guess our parents did. Jefferson, that big room they had, dancing, Jefferson Hall - Grove Center.
MR. HAGAMAN: Grove Center, long in the late ‘40s or I guess ‘46 or along in there had big name orchestras like Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey--
MR. CARDEN: Had Gene Krupa’s orchestra one time, came in.
MR. HAGAMAN: Gene Krupa was here with the other orchestras, so was Buddy.
MRS. ARGO: Roosevelt – did he come here – who was it, we had several presidents come here too.
MR. CARDEN: Had Vice President Barkley came here.
MRS. ARGO: Did Roosevelt come here? - No I don’t think so.
MR. HAGAMAN: Kennedy came through when he was senator and was running for ---, he and Jackie came through. Had a reception down at the Oak Terrace for them.
MRS. ARGO: We were living in Indiana when President Roosevelt died. So he couldn’t have come here.
MRS. HAGAMAN: On the construction end of the housing and also especially of the labs, my dad was an auditor, and he came here. He transferred to the Manhattan District from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And his job was to get equipment so they could build this place. And he’d go out around in Kentucky and Tennessee and confiscate –
MR. HAGAMAN: Well, confiscate.
MRS. HAGAMAN: To find the equipment. And he would get it from contractors and private contractors in this part of the country.
MR. HAGAMAN: Tell us about his office.
MRS. HAGAMAN: When he first came here he was back and forth between New York and Knoxville all fall in ‘42 as a government employee and his office was at Knoxville at Morton McCreary Chrysler dealer. His desk was over the grease pit – they laid boards over the grease pit and his desk was over the grease pit. Then of course, when they finished the Administration Building out here, they were all moved out here.
MR. HAGAMAN: But he still kept track of the equipment.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Yes, he did.
MR. KIELY: Well that must have been quite a job.
MR. HAGAMAN: Well, Dad’s earliest job was he came here on the job site March 1, 1943 and worked as an electrical superintendent and his first charge was to electrify the existing houses so the guards could move in that they were hiring.
MRS. ARGO: And remember, wasn’t it number 4 bus, wasn’t that the number of it, you could get it every 4 minutes.
MR. HAGAMAN: I do remember in the paper yesterday there was a mistake in it. They were talking about the free bus service. We had it over these city slickers in the trailer camp. Stone and Webster ran a bus free. But we had to pay a nickel if we rode the other bus. - East Village or City busses. I used to ride a bus home. Cost me a dime to ride home.
MR. CARDEN: You could ride all over Oak Ridge on the bus and just get a transfer from one end of the town to the other.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Well some of the people who worked out here were placed in big old farm houses that were out and around. And of course, the stories of how they moved people out so quickly. They didn’t have time to ___. My father went out to one of the houses one day and the fire was still burning in the fireplaces.
MR. HAGAMAN: That’s terrible. They wouldn’t give them even a day’s notice. The average price paid per acre was $37 for the land, and they couldn’t replace it.
MRS. ARGO: Of course, land didn’t cost as much back then.
MR. HAGAMAN: But that made such a shortage of land. All these people had to go someplace. So there wasn’t enough land for them, raised the prices over. Everyone that sued collected more than they were offered. I had a map, Dad had a map in the job he had in locating the farm houses and what not. He had an area map that showed the names and acreages and houses of all the farms that were taken. I gave that to the library, it’s in the Oak Ridge Room down there. I’ve known some of the people that lived here. And of course, the older they are, the longer they are away from it the nicer the farms were. But one Loveday family that was down between K-25 and X-10 on the river had 1700 acres and cattle, and he said we couldn’t even count the pigs and cattle. They just came through and said, “You’ve got to go tomorrow.”
MR. CARDEN: Gallahar family had a large farm down at the K-25 site, I was told. And they ___. Some of the people, I was also told, they had been uprooted when they were building the Norris Dam in the ‘30s and so some of those said they had moved from that area to here and then were uprooted again.
MR. HAGAMAN: John Rice Irwin’s family was one of those. John Rice and his brother, David, and some kids that played around Y-12.
MRS. ARGO: He wanted to know what we did when the gates were opened. Do you remember where you were when the gates were opened?
MR. HAGAMAN: Yes, well I was here, I came in from school. Had a couple of friends down from Kentucky , three in fact, and tried to get in, couldn’t get close enough to the gate opening to see anything, so we came up town.
MR. KIELY: Anyone who could, could come to the gate opening? It was a big thing to do?
MR. HAGAMAN: I really don’t know the history of it, but I have a pass that expired on March 19th. Evidently left my badge at school or something. Dad, being a contractor and concessionaire here, was able to call security and get passes. So I didn’t have to wait on somebody to bring a pass out when I brought friends in. They were coming for employment, you know. But I have the pass in some of my things. Expired on March 19th, 1949. I’ll bet there are a bunch of them.
MR. KIELY: Wonder how many of them are still around here. Not many.
MR. HAGAMAN: I don’t remember any big difference. We did start locking our door occasionally. We did have a little more company that did just drop in. Mother was always willing and able to take care of anybody that came along. Fact is, I came in one night in that little trailer, it was a double wide, I came in one night and I was the 12th one to sleep there. We were all over the floors.
MRS. HAGAMAN: One nice thing about having a closed city you didn’t get unexpected company. They had to let you know they were coming.
MR. HAGAMAN: I had an aunt who talked her way in. In fact the guard at the gate drove her in.
MR. KIELY: She was obviously a good talker.
MRS. ARGO: And it was a safe environment then. With all the guards around, and you could leave your doors unlocked, you could go downtown at midnight and walk back home by yourself even though you were a teenager. Nobody bothered you.
MR. KIELY: That wasn’t considered unusual because of the security that was here. You felt safe.
MR. HAGAMAN: I think the main thing that bothered me, that bothered Mom and Dad, was the door to door salesman. Invaded the place. Rich Oak Ridgers, you know, they can buy anything and everything. And they were all over town.
MR. KIELY: Any other differences, other than the salesmen, that you can think of in the differences, the feeling maybe before the gates were opened.
MRS. HAGAMAN: The first time I came down, I was in school when all this went on, I had gotten, when did the gates open, ‘49? So I was still in school. The first time I came down here afterwards, you know it was unusual just to drive right on into town. You didn’t have to stop and check in.
MR. KIELY: What type of procedure did you have to go through before that, when it was a secure community? What kind of process did you have to go thru to leave or get back in?
MR. HAGAMAN: You had the badges. Occasionally they would search your car going in or going out, either one.
MR. CARDEN: It’s in my coat pocket, I believe.
MR. HAGAMAN: There you go. They would occasionally search your car and you were not allowed to have cameras, whiskey, and that sort thing.
MRS. ARGO: Even the kids had to show badges.
MR. HAGAMAN: At first, it was an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, the first badge was a mimeographed 8 ½ by 11 with your age, weight and height on it. A year later we had a little 3x5 card with the same thing on it. And then they started making badges.
MR. CARDEN: Most of the resident badges were like this.
MR. HAGAMAN: I’m showing the back side so he can get the ID (showing the badge to the camera).
MR. KIELY: Why don’t you turn it around again?
MR. CARDEN: OK.
MR. KIELY: Who’s on that?
MR. CARDEN: My mother’s on one badge and my mother-in-law is on the other badge. Mary Ruth Carden and Mrs. Lillian Webber. All the residents had these except your real young children.
MR. HAGAMAN: Had a little confusion early on because the guards were recruited from local areas. They had some come in; they were called auxiliary MPs later. But first they were just guards; they were employees that weren’t really trained and this sort of thing, pretty nice people as a rule. We had one incident on that first pass, Mrs. Pangren and another lady started out Elza Gate one day and the guard wouldn’t let them out. And there was a little commotion going on and voices raised and corporal or sergeant in charge came over, and said, “What’s the trouble?” They said, “Well, he won’t let us out.” He said, “No I won’t let them out, the pass says Admit.” And he said, “OK lady, go on.”
MR. KIELY: Did anyone ever try to get around the security, test the security?
All: Oh yeah!
MRS. ARGO: You know we also heard about this fellow that took a wheelbarrow out of the plant. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.
MR. KIELY: What was that story?
MRS. ARGO: Well, he supposedly made a bet with somebody. They always said you couldn’t take anything out of the plant. So he walked out of the plant with his wheelbarrow and had something in the wheelbarrow, and the guard made him empty the wheelbarrow, but he took the wheelbarrow out. But it was the wheelbarrow he was stealing.
MR. HAGAMAN: Tell him about the pickup you were talking about.
MRS. ARGO: Oh well, we took a bunch of kids and went out the gate in a pickup truck and we had a seat built, a piece of wood built across, and a bunch would sit on top of the seat, and bunch would get underneath the seat just to see if we could get through the gates. Don’t know why – we all had badges.
MR. KIELY: Youthful exuberance.
MR. HAGAMAN: We went out one night with Jean Henry who didn’t have a badge, and we got out. Went over to Knoxville, came back in, and couldn’t get back in. This was close to midnight. They put her…that was at Edgemoor. They put her in a patrol car and took her to guard headquarters, and we had to follow her down there and had to get her dad out of bed. No phones, they had to send a guard by the house. He was rather upset.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I remember hearing a story about some couples going into a party or something, and one of the girls got under the other girl’s dress. They had long dresses on, long formals, and one of the girls hid under the other girl’s long dress to get back in.
All: Yeah.
MR. HAGAMAN: I don’t remember but Bill volunteered to do that the next time….
MR. CARDEN: I can recall once, there was three couples of us having a picnic down on what’s called “G” Road, which was one of the patrol roads that went down to the fence, and we were all sitting there having our picnic and a guard came up and asked to see our badges, so five of us had our badges and one of the girls didn’t have her badge. And we pleaded with the guard to let us have him follow us back and we’d go to her house and she could go into her house and get her badge. But he wouldn’t do that, so he took us down to the guard headquarters, which at the time was in a dormitory, one of the old dormitories that they had here, and the guards, and we had to talk to the desk sergeant you know and he was giving us, “You must carry your badge with you at all times”, and this and that. And the girl was almost in tears. But finally he gave her a pass and checked her name off the master list that they had to make sure she really lived here.
MR. HAGAMAN: They were serious about security.
All: Sure.
MR. HAGAMAN: Had trouble getting my little 12-year-old cousin in because she didn’t have to have a pass until she was 13.
MR. KIELY: And they didn’t believe she was that age? Do you all have any memories of the Museum, in terms of the first time you came to the Museum, how the Museum has changed over the years?
MR. HAGAMAN: I was an apprentice electrician for Dad. I dropped out of school that summer. I worked at the brick warehouses on the east end of town as you come into Oak Ridge, and as we were finishing up on the first one they were setting up the Museum in the end and that was the very first exhibit they had before they had any road exhibits or any move to the Jefferson Cafeteria. And as I remember, there were cutouts, life size cutouts, and I cannot remember the comic characters, but it was like the Bumsteads, or Disney characters, explaining, in the balloons what you were looking at. It was the first time anybody was trying to tell you what they were doing in Oak Ridge, what had been done, and all this. Yes, it has changed a little.
MR. KIELY: Anybody else have any memories of like the first time they came to the Museum or any particular exhibits?
MRS. ARGO: I worked down there for a while. I had to work the day the gates opened. I had to work in the Museum.
MR. KIELY: So you worked in the Museum?
MRS. ARGO: They had the movie star to come down there, Rod Cameron, and Adolph Menjou, Marie MacDonald, Adele Jergens.
MR. HAGAMAN: And Adolph Menjou-
MRS. ARGO: And I thought the Museum was fantastic. I loved it. Very interesting, at the Jefferson Cafeteria. And it seemed to me like there was more to see down there than there is up here because it is so spacious up here. And it wasn’t that way down there.
MR. KIELY: What kind of exhibits to you remember being down there?
MRS. ARGO: The one where you put the hand on that and the hair went everywhere. And they took their exhibits all around the United States. And they had everything in there.
MR. KIELY: Was it heavily visited down there when the gates opened?
MRS. ARGO: Oh there was a lot of people down there, can’t remember how many.
MR. HAGAMAN: The town was so crowded that while we were watching the parade in Jackson Square the fire truck tried to go up Kentucky Avenue and couldn’t make it, on an emergency. Could not get up, could not turn around, just sat there.
MR. CARDEN: It was probably the one they got the picture of, in the parade area, there , there is a fire truck, I believe.
MR. HAGAMAN: Yeah, there was a fire truck in that parade.
MR. CARDEN: Yes, and the Oak Ridge High band was in the parade.
MR. CARDEN: I was a chauffeur for I thought , Marie “The Body” MacDonald, but it turned out it was Marie “The Body” MacDonald’s clothes.
MR. KIELY: You got close-
MR. CARDEN: Oh yes, there was four of us guys, and we were all assigned to different stars, and we’d get a call to meet them at a certain area, like maybe the High School Auditorium, and somebody would come out and-
MR. HAGAMAN: Did you get to keep anything?
MR. CARDEN: No, but practically all the happenings then, we missed them because we were on call. But I did get to see some of the parade, right at the very last part of the festivities there. It was still interesting.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I didn’t live here at the time, I lived in Ohio, and I saw the opening of the gates thru Life Magazine.
MR. KIELY: What was that like?
MRS. HAGAMAN: That was really interesting, to pick up Life Magazine, and see your hometown. Some of my friends. I didn’t come back to Oak Ridge until 1962, so that was the first time I saw the Museum, when it was down in Jefferson. It was very interesting.
MR. CARDEN: I think an interesting thing about our school was concerned was the transition that took place. The day I registered in to the high school there were 13 of us coming in that day and 26 going out. And I said, that’s a lot of people coming and going. And the registrar said that’s the way it is almost every day right now. So there was a time in 1946 that, I didn’t realize such a transition was taking place. I thought most of the people that came here were going to stay here.
MR. HAGAMAN: You would have still been in school when Eastman laid off.
MR. CARDEN: I was.
MR. HAGAMAN: 11 or 12,000 people.
MR. CARDEN: 22 I think I heard. 1947, that was when we had a mass exodus from the Y-12 plant.
MR. HAGAMAN: I thought we’d been out of here.
MR. CARDEN: People’s feelings were, we weren’t going to be here very long. After the war, some said 5 years, some said 10. Never dreamed I’d have been here as long as I have been. But I’m certainly glad I have. It’s been very good to us. We’ve all enjoyed it.
MR. KIELY: I’d like to thank you all for spending time with us. Is there anything that anyone else would like to add to the discussion or something you might have forgotten?
MR. CARDEN: Well, I was working for the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies and I started in September of 1949 so I was down like where Mary was at the Museum, on a fairly frequent time, but I worked in what was called the Special Training Division which was held in the brick building behind the Castle on the Hill at the time and the Museum, like Mary said, was very interesting because you got to see some the aspects, some of the scientific things that were involved here.
MR. KIELY: That was a real interest to the residents as well as to the people who were traveling thru who came to see what Oak Ridge was like.
MR. HAGAMAN: I would like to thank you for taking this down, and also like to reserve, and maybe be called on the next 50th.
MR. KIELY: I hope we can do that. Thank you very much, we appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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ORAL HISTORY OF BILL CARDEN, CARL AND IDA HAGAMAN, AND MARY ARGO
Interviewed by Denis Kiely
March 19, 1999
MR. KIELY: This is March 19, 1999. I’m Denis Kiely and we’re here at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the gates in Oak Ridge at the American Museum of Science and Energy and I have some former residents with me who I’d like to, if they would, introduce themselves.
MR. CARDEN: I’m Bill Carden. I came to Oak Ridge in 1945, December 15, with my mother and dad and I started in Oak Ridge school system in January of 1946. My father was a welder and worked at the K-25 powerhouse at the time. My mother was a housewife. And I certainly enjoyed being in Oak Ridge, then and even today. It’s a very nice city.
MR. HAGAMAN: Carl Hagaman, Jr. Claim to fame is the longest in tenure, earliest resident of Oak Ridge. My father was able to rent the first trailer that was rented to anyone. There were no houses. We came in July 3, 1943. There was no one else here. There was one family that was allowed to come in the night before – illegally – because they had a sick child and were living on the highway and they talked their way in – the Hankins’ family. The 4th of July, my entertainment was walking up to – let’s see what’s there now - the entrance to the hospital off the Turnpike – Dad’s field office was up there it was with Stone and Webster. I walked up there so I could ride home with him on the Fourth of July. There was nobody here. The first house, I guess, was occupied maybe 3 or 4 weeks later up on Florida Avenue. We thought we were coming here to spend the summer, but it’s been a long summer. Very enjoyable, been good to us, we’ve been in the electrical contracting business practically the whole time. Dad started his company back in 1944, and I continued with him, and am closing it out just now.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I’m Ida Hagaman. I was Ida Saaphoff when I came here. We came to Oak Ridge in August of 1943. My father had been down here since, well sometime in the fall of 1942, and Mother and I came down to Oak Ridge when school was out, or came to Knoxville after school was out, in June of ’43. And there were no houses, as Carl said, so we lived in Knoxville until we were able to get a house in Oak Ridge which was August of ’43.
MRS. ARGO: I’m Mary Darnell Argo. I came here in the summer of 1945. Started Oak Ridge High School in September of 1945. We came here right after my brother was killed in the war. He was 19. We moved into a “D” house which was like heaven to us, because we’d been living in one room, moving around with the government working for the war effort, and Oak Ridge residence was fantastic. It was wonderful time to be a teenager.
MR. HAGAMAN: The first day of school, October 1. School starting was delayed because there was a fire there. They started school the first day of October and Ida and I were among the first 83 there. Of course, we went our separate ways.
MR. KIELY: What was it like going to school here in Oak Ridge?
MR. HAGAMAN: It was rather basic at that time. A lady named, I believe, Cosgrove was physical education teacher for the girls and she would come out in the hallway and blow a whistle to change classes, because the bell system wasn’t there. And they were out in the hallway, working on the lockers, and all this sort, and it was just a mess. But we had some of the finest teachers in the world. They recruited them from all around the area. We were exposed to a real good education.
MRS. ARGO: What was it Miss Morris said about, if some person came into the room and said his name was something else, and you didn’t question him and because of the job his father had.
MR. HAGAMAN: One came into the room and introduced himself, and I can’t remember who it was, and she called him by his first name and said, “I’m glad to meet you,” and it was the Governor.
MR. KIELY: So even when you went to school you were very conscious of security.
MRS. ARGO: You didn’t talk about your parent’s jobs really.
MRS. HAGAMAN: The very first school newspaper we had didn’t have any last names in it because they didn’t want any information to leak out of the people who were here.
MR. CARDEN: Then when you met some of the other students you learned their names, but you very seldom ever, if ever asked what did your father do, or what does your father do here, or what does your mother do here.
MRS. ARGO: You just asked where they came from.
MR. CARDEN: Exactly. And you just became accustomed to doing that. It wasn’t very hard. A lot of people think it must be hard not to ask that. We got used to it. And sometimes we might ask later on what kind of house they lived in.
MRS. ARGO: Way back then it didn’t matter.
MR. CARDEN: Then it really didn’t matter.
MRS. HAGAMAN: There were no cliques, no one knew anyone else, everyone was new and it was a good way to start, and everybody had to work together.
MR. HAGAMAN: It was a melting pot. My high school class, I went to summer school and graduated a year early, graduated in ‘45. My class had 36 states and 3 foreign countries that were in it. In a class of only 130 or something like that. And of course, the school grew after that. Larger classes--
MR. KIELY: What were the early facilities like in terms of the school building and--
MR. HAGAMAN: The building was brand new – it was nice, but it wasn’t finished.
MRS. HAGAMAN: The fire was in the auditorium and I don’t know how it started but--
MR. HAGAMAN: Lightning.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Lightning. My father came home that night and said that school would not start the next week because of the fire in the building and it was a brand new. We walked into a brand new building, it was a nice building, spacious and adequate for the needs of that time, but of course, we outgrew it in a hurry.
MR. HAGAMAN: – well equipped. I remember in Kentucky they came around and took all the surplus office machines from the schools for projects like this. And we go into typing class with all new typewriters and adding machines. That wasn’t bad. Chemistry lab was equipped. It was first class.
MR. KIELY: What about any memories of the staff, teachers, principals?
MR. HAGAMAN: Lots of them.
MRS. ARGO: I think Mrs. Martin was one of the teachers that everyone was closest to, don’t you for some reason.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Not particularly back then, we became closer.
MR. HAGAMAN: Oh yeah, I walked out of her class one day while she was teaching Algebra. She came out into the hall and admitted she was wrong. “Please come back in, but I can’t let you talk to me like that in class.” She was a doll. But she also got Ida and me together after our other marriages. Ida was widowed and I was divorced and she kept after us, about the availability of the other when Ida moved back to town. And quizzed me, “Have you called Ida yet?” I accused her…we just happened to run into her on our 10th anniversary, and I said, “See what you did to me?” And she said, “When are you going to do something nice for me like that?”
MRS. ARGO: And Francelle Buckminster still lives in Oak Ridge, one of our teachers. She thinks we’re all so nice. She doesn’t remember too well.
MR. CARDEN: Teachers were really, I think the teachers were really genuine to the students. They would come from different schools too so they had a new experience coming--
MRS. ARGO: So they could understand our silly ways –
MR. HAGAMAN: And they provided employment for those that wanted to work at the plants in the summer.
MR. KIELY: Summer jobs available, the teachers--
MR. HAGAMAN: And any kid that wanted to work, could.
MRS. HAGAMAN: And did you tell him how fast the government houses--
MR. HAGAMAN: Some part time job, I worked at the post office for a year and a half and averaged $42 a week, part time.
MR. KIELY: And there was a prank involving a fictitious student?
MR. HAGAMAN: Harry Pruitt
MR. KIELY: Tell us a little about Harry Pruitt
MRS. ARGO: Well, Harry Pruitt answered the roll call and every time we had a substitute teacher his name got on the list, and his name was called out and some boy would answer for him, and…he still exists, I think he comes to all our reunions.
MRS. HAGAMAN: We have pictures of him, don’t we?
MRS. ARGO: Yes.
MR. CARDEN: What did you say, he has 13 kids now.
MR. HAGAMAN: Yeah, he and Harriet have 13 children now.
MRS. ARGO: I thought he had more than that. I think he had one child for every year we were out of school.
MR. CARDEN: I guess that was it.
MR. KIELY: Well, did anyone ever catch on to the fact that Harry was not really there?
MR. HAGAMAN: Oh yes, eventually they did, but Mr. Kennedy pulled the best one when he told us that we had lost a member of our class, and they were saddened by it. Mr. Pruitt would no longer be with us.
MR. CARDEN: We have these reunions, this day and time, and we send Harry Pruitt an invitation to come to the reunions.
MRS. ARGO: Well, don’t we put their address down as the address of the White House?
MR. HAGAMAN: Yes.
MRS. ARGO: And the White House has been known to get these letters and send them back saying, he doesn’t live here.
MR. KIELY: You had earlier mentioned the opening of the City for the residents to come in. What were the houses like, even before the houses? You were saying earlier that you lived in the first trailer.
MR. HAGAMAN: Well, they were rather basic. They had no bathrooms or running water. You had a utility house or a bathhouse that had showers and laundry facilities and bathrooms. They had primarily to start with, they had gasoline cook units, like a camp stove, and kerosene heaters. And they burned a few of them. And they went quickly with the gasoline and kerosene. But it was primitive.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Tell them about your mother’s washing machine.
MR. HAGAMAN: Oh Mother had a new washing machine which she wouldn’t bring down here. So Dad through a friend in Kentucky bought an old square tub Maytag and brought it down, and people kept trying to borrow it and this that and the other, and she started renting it at 50 cents an hour. And believe it or not, people would go down at night and use it without paying. So Dad, being in the electrical business, made up a twist lock receptacle cord which you had to have an adaptor to use it. And she would keep that at the house and people would come and she actually reserved time on that machine. It wore out; I learned to be a real Maytag mechanic. It even wore the tub out. And I didn’t know that was possible. But we replaced everything on that machine including the tub. And Mom, with 50 cents an hour, she was rolling in cash.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I was going to tell about the houses that were built out here. We lived in Knoxville in the summer until our house was ready. My Mother, Dad, and I were the only ones down here, so we were assigned an “A” house which was the smallest of the cemesto houses. It had kitchen and a living room that had a little dining L on the side, 2 bedrooms and a bath. Very adequate for 3 people. But then my sisters came home and a friend came along with them and we ended out camping out practically in the house. The houses were nice, they were furnished with good electric stoves and refrigerators, but the floors weren’t finished. It was just green lumber, and the lumber dried up and a lot of people refinished them. Would you put wood filler on the floors?
MR. HAGAMAN: They were hardwood floors. It just wasn’t dry enough. A lot of them were nice.
MRS. HAGAMAN: We had central heat, coal furnace. The furnace room was a little room off the side of the kitchen and had the furnace was in it and a little section of it was walled off for the coal. And the trucks could come up to the house and put the coal in the coal bin from the outside. They didn’t have to come in. And then there was a door on the inside where you could scoop the coal out.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Houses all had their back door on the street side and their front door in the center with the trees and the woods between the two streets. I came home from school one day and the house was black, floors walls cabinets were jet black. We had had coal delivered that day and the door came off and really got all through the house. Was a mess.
MR. HAGAMAN: In other types of housing they had coal bins at the end of the walk up the street. The reason for the back door entry was the coal bin – they delivered coal that way. Earlier there was no mail delivery anyway, so that wasn’t important. But on the others – up on Wade Lane where the folks lived - they had coal bins on either side of the wooden walkway going down to the houses. And they dumped the coal there and the people carried it.
MR. CARDEN: That’s the kind of house we lived in - was called a “T” duplex and the entrances were on the ends of the house, one entrance on each end, and it had a Warm Morning heater type, a little coal stove, for the heat of the house. It had a shower and very limited, and three bedrooms so it was adequate. It had a beautiful view of the mountains behind us. You were talking about the coal bins, they were outside of these houses and you just walked down the boardwalk and filled up your coal scuttle, and take it back on into the house.
MRS. HAGAMAN: There were several different types of cemesto houses, the A house was the smallest, and the B house which also had two bedrooms but it had a larger living room and a larger dining L off the living room. And I guess the coal room, furnace room, was larger too. And then there was a C house that was kind of an L shaped house, that had three bedrooms and the dining room was in the living room too. And the D house had three bedrooms too but it was a long house, and had a separate dining room, nice entrance hall.
MR. HAGAMAN: Some of the B2s had two bathrooms.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Yeah.
MR. HAGAMAN: But to give you an idea, the A house she was talking about, including utilities – water, electricity and coal, - was like $30 a month, which was cheap by 1943 standards, because a lot of people raised Cain about the utilities, went around and put electric meters on the houses. Had to pay for that stuff.
MR. KIELY: Mary, you lived in a D?
MRS. ARGO: We lived in a D house.
MR. KIELY: And what was that like. Where did you live before?
MRS. ARGO: Well, Missouri, Indiana, Alabama, Illinois-
MR. KIELY: So you were moved by the government on a regular basis?
MRS. ARGO: Yes, and then when my brother got killed my stepdad just quit his job. He was working for DuPont and he just walked off the job. And then, they sent us to Oak Ridge and he said, well he didn’t want to stay here, and so he left again, and they brought us back. And I’m glad they did. They told us they’d take our shoes and throw them away and we’d never be able to leave. And we haven’t.
MR. KIELY: How was the D house?
MRS. ARGO: Oh, it was a ranch style house, three bedrooms and a big living room, and kitchen. To us, it was like a castle. It was so big and we were used to renting one bedroom.
MR. HAGAMAN: 1638 square feet I think it was.
MR. KIELY: Oh my that is--
MRS. ARGO: It had one bathroom but it had another room that was empty to build another bathroom. But they didn’t build it in ours, but they did in some, I understand. But it was really nice.
MR. CARDEN: Did some of the F houses, which was the largest house we had, did they have four bedrooms in any of those?
MR. HAGAMAN: I don’t think so.
MR. CARDEN: Just only three bedrooms.
MRS. ARGO: They faced like a C.
MR. HAGAMAN: Only four bedrooms were in some of the apartments, like K’s or L’s or something like that. Some of those had four. I don’t remember which ones.
MR. HAGAMAN: But they had flattops, but they built cemestos so fast, we would walk from Midtown, the trailer park, up to Jackson Square each night just to have something to do. Eventually they opened up the theater up there and we would go to the theater and see the same thing every now and then. You’d walk up Pennsylvania Avenue, which was one of the main roads through there, we’d walk up Pennsylvania until we got to Tennessee and there would be nothing, and the next night there would be foundations for maybe 100 houses. The next day there was houses on those foundations. A lot of them…they just built them overnight. They grew up. I don’t know how many people they had, but they had about 4 different contractors in here building houses. They turned them out just like chickens laying eggs. Then they started bringing in the flattops from Indiana. A trailer manufacturer started building them, bringing them in in sections and set them up on wood supports. Other than that in housing, that and the dormitories, that’s all we had and we got up to a populations of 83,000 or so in a hurry.
MR. CARDEN: Didn’t they bring some of the housing from other projects too?
MR. HAGAMAN: Could be.
MR. CARDEN: I thought some things came from Fontana. Could be, trailers, some of the flattops, prefab that they had over there.
MRS. ARGO: The nice thing was the way they named the streets. Were like Pennsylvania, all the streets off Pennsylvania, started with P, Florida everything was an F. It was easy to find where you wanted to go.
MR. HAGAMAN: They set up in ‘47 or ‘48 a production line down on what was then West Division Road, now Lafayette Drive and build a house similar to a flat top. This was right next to my dad’s office. The general contractor was John A. Johnson and they built like 500 of these things and set them up all over and then they got a contract to build 250 more so they were building houses here – that was later, that was in ‘44. Housing was a big part of Roane-Anderson was set up strictly to manage concessions, housing, and entertainment. They ran the beer halls, the bowling alleys, they furnished. They did a lot to keep people here, keep people happy. As she said, take their shoes…
MR. KIELY: So as young people what did you do to entertain yourselves?
MR. CARDEN: Some of the theaters I understand were open all night long. Central Cafeteria was open, recreation halls, swimming pools, tennis. Largest swimming pool in the south for the first two or three years.
MR. HAGAMAN: And that water was ice cold – spring fed. I quit going in when I got three leeches on me.
MRS. HAGAMAN: And that water was ice cold.
MR. CARDEN: It was spring fed. The spring is still there, of course.
MR. HAGAMAN: There were tennis court dances. Bill Pollack who’s famous started to play music at the tennis courts for adults and kids, but it was all sorts of organized sports.
MR. CARDEN: Bowling alleys here and available and Central Recreation Hall for the high school kids which I guess became the Wildcat Den at the time.
MRS. ARGO: Had huge dance halls.
MR. CARDEN: Oh yes!
MR. KIELY: The dance, was it real popular?
MRS. ARGO: Yes, I don’t think we did that much dancing as kids, but I guess our parents did. Jefferson, that big room they had, dancing, Jefferson Hall - Grove Center.
MR. HAGAMAN: Grove Center, long in the late ‘40s or I guess ‘46 or along in there had big name orchestras like Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey--
MR. CARDEN: Had Gene Krupa’s orchestra one time, came in.
MR. HAGAMAN: Gene Krupa was here with the other orchestras, so was Buddy.
MRS. ARGO: Roosevelt – did he come here – who was it, we had several presidents come here too.
MR. CARDEN: Had Vice President Barkley came here.
MRS. ARGO: Did Roosevelt come here? - No I don’t think so.
MR. HAGAMAN: Kennedy came through when he was senator and was running for ---, he and Jackie came through. Had a reception down at the Oak Terrace for them.
MRS. ARGO: We were living in Indiana when President Roosevelt died. So he couldn’t have come here.
MRS. HAGAMAN: On the construction end of the housing and also especially of the labs, my dad was an auditor, and he came here. He transferred to the Manhattan District from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And his job was to get equipment so they could build this place. And he’d go out around in Kentucky and Tennessee and confiscate –
MR. HAGAMAN: Well, confiscate.
MRS. HAGAMAN: To find the equipment. And he would get it from contractors and private contractors in this part of the country.
MR. HAGAMAN: Tell us about his office.
MRS. HAGAMAN: When he first came here he was back and forth between New York and Knoxville all fall in ‘42 as a government employee and his office was at Knoxville at Morton McCreary Chrysler dealer. His desk was over the grease pit – they laid boards over the grease pit and his desk was over the grease pit. Then of course, when they finished the Administration Building out here, they were all moved out here.
MR. HAGAMAN: But he still kept track of the equipment.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Yes, he did.
MR. KIELY: Well that must have been quite a job.
MR. HAGAMAN: Well, Dad’s earliest job was he came here on the job site March 1, 1943 and worked as an electrical superintendent and his first charge was to electrify the existing houses so the guards could move in that they were hiring.
MRS. ARGO: And remember, wasn’t it number 4 bus, wasn’t that the number of it, you could get it every 4 minutes.
MR. HAGAMAN: I do remember in the paper yesterday there was a mistake in it. They were talking about the free bus service. We had it over these city slickers in the trailer camp. Stone and Webster ran a bus free. But we had to pay a nickel if we rode the other bus. - East Village or City busses. I used to ride a bus home. Cost me a dime to ride home.
MR. CARDEN: You could ride all over Oak Ridge on the bus and just get a transfer from one end of the town to the other.
MRS. HAGAMAN: Well some of the people who worked out here were placed in big old farm houses that were out and around. And of course, the stories of how they moved people out so quickly. They didn’t have time to ___. My father went out to one of the houses one day and the fire was still burning in the fireplaces.
MR. HAGAMAN: That’s terrible. They wouldn’t give them even a day’s notice. The average price paid per acre was $37 for the land, and they couldn’t replace it.
MRS. ARGO: Of course, land didn’t cost as much back then.
MR. HAGAMAN: But that made such a shortage of land. All these people had to go someplace. So there wasn’t enough land for them, raised the prices over. Everyone that sued collected more than they were offered. I had a map, Dad had a map in the job he had in locating the farm houses and what not. He had an area map that showed the names and acreages and houses of all the farms that were taken. I gave that to the library, it’s in the Oak Ridge Room down there. I’ve known some of the people that lived here. And of course, the older they are, the longer they are away from it the nicer the farms were. But one Loveday family that was down between K-25 and X-10 on the river had 1700 acres and cattle, and he said we couldn’t even count the pigs and cattle. They just came through and said, “You’ve got to go tomorrow.”
MR. CARDEN: Gallahar family had a large farm down at the K-25 site, I was told. And they ___. Some of the people, I was also told, they had been uprooted when they were building the Norris Dam in the ‘30s and so some of those said they had moved from that area to here and then were uprooted again.
MR. HAGAMAN: John Rice Irwin’s family was one of those. John Rice and his brother, David, and some kids that played around Y-12.
MRS. ARGO: He wanted to know what we did when the gates were opened. Do you remember where you were when the gates were opened?
MR. HAGAMAN: Yes, well I was here, I came in from school. Had a couple of friends down from Kentucky , three in fact, and tried to get in, couldn’t get close enough to the gate opening to see anything, so we came up town.
MR. KIELY: Anyone who could, could come to the gate opening? It was a big thing to do?
MR. HAGAMAN: I really don’t know the history of it, but I have a pass that expired on March 19th. Evidently left my badge at school or something. Dad, being a contractor and concessionaire here, was able to call security and get passes. So I didn’t have to wait on somebody to bring a pass out when I brought friends in. They were coming for employment, you know. But I have the pass in some of my things. Expired on March 19th, 1949. I’ll bet there are a bunch of them.
MR. KIELY: Wonder how many of them are still around here. Not many.
MR. HAGAMAN: I don’t remember any big difference. We did start locking our door occasionally. We did have a little more company that did just drop in. Mother was always willing and able to take care of anybody that came along. Fact is, I came in one night in that little trailer, it was a double wide, I came in one night and I was the 12th one to sleep there. We were all over the floors.
MRS. HAGAMAN: One nice thing about having a closed city you didn’t get unexpected company. They had to let you know they were coming.
MR. HAGAMAN: I had an aunt who talked her way in. In fact the guard at the gate drove her in.
MR. KIELY: She was obviously a good talker.
MRS. ARGO: And it was a safe environment then. With all the guards around, and you could leave your doors unlocked, you could go downtown at midnight and walk back home by yourself even though you were a teenager. Nobody bothered you.
MR. KIELY: That wasn’t considered unusual because of the security that was here. You felt safe.
MR. HAGAMAN: I think the main thing that bothered me, that bothered Mom and Dad, was the door to door salesman. Invaded the place. Rich Oak Ridgers, you know, they can buy anything and everything. And they were all over town.
MR. KIELY: Any other differences, other than the salesmen, that you can think of in the differences, the feeling maybe before the gates were opened.
MRS. HAGAMAN: The first time I came down, I was in school when all this went on, I had gotten, when did the gates open, ‘49? So I was still in school. The first time I came down here afterwards, you know it was unusual just to drive right on into town. You didn’t have to stop and check in.
MR. KIELY: What type of procedure did you have to go through before that, when it was a secure community? What kind of process did you have to go thru to leave or get back in?
MR. HAGAMAN: You had the badges. Occasionally they would search your car going in or going out, either one.
MR. CARDEN: It’s in my coat pocket, I believe.
MR. HAGAMAN: There you go. They would occasionally search your car and you were not allowed to have cameras, whiskey, and that sort thing.
MRS. ARGO: Even the kids had to show badges.
MR. HAGAMAN: At first, it was an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, the first badge was a mimeographed 8 ½ by 11 with your age, weight and height on it. A year later we had a little 3x5 card with the same thing on it. And then they started making badges.
MR. CARDEN: Most of the resident badges were like this.
MR. HAGAMAN: I’m showing the back side so he can get the ID (showing the badge to the camera).
MR. KIELY: Why don’t you turn it around again?
MR. CARDEN: OK.
MR. KIELY: Who’s on that?
MR. CARDEN: My mother’s on one badge and my mother-in-law is on the other badge. Mary Ruth Carden and Mrs. Lillian Webber. All the residents had these except your real young children.
MR. HAGAMAN: Had a little confusion early on because the guards were recruited from local areas. They had some come in; they were called auxiliary MPs later. But first they were just guards; they were employees that weren’t really trained and this sort of thing, pretty nice people as a rule. We had one incident on that first pass, Mrs. Pangren and another lady started out Elza Gate one day and the guard wouldn’t let them out. And there was a little commotion going on and voices raised and corporal or sergeant in charge came over, and said, “What’s the trouble?” They said, “Well, he won’t let us out.” He said, “No I won’t let them out, the pass says Admit.” And he said, “OK lady, go on.”
MR. KIELY: Did anyone ever try to get around the security, test the security?
All: Oh yeah!
MRS. ARGO: You know we also heard about this fellow that took a wheelbarrow out of the plant. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.
MR. KIELY: What was that story?
MRS. ARGO: Well, he supposedly made a bet with somebody. They always said you couldn’t take anything out of the plant. So he walked out of the plant with his wheelbarrow and had something in the wheelbarrow, and the guard made him empty the wheelbarrow, but he took the wheelbarrow out. But it was the wheelbarrow he was stealing.
MR. HAGAMAN: Tell him about the pickup you were talking about.
MRS. ARGO: Oh well, we took a bunch of kids and went out the gate in a pickup truck and we had a seat built, a piece of wood built across, and a bunch would sit on top of the seat, and bunch would get underneath the seat just to see if we could get through the gates. Don’t know why – we all had badges.
MR. KIELY: Youthful exuberance.
MR. HAGAMAN: We went out one night with Jean Henry who didn’t have a badge, and we got out. Went over to Knoxville, came back in, and couldn’t get back in. This was close to midnight. They put her…that was at Edgemoor. They put her in a patrol car and took her to guard headquarters, and we had to follow her down there and had to get her dad out of bed. No phones, they had to send a guard by the house. He was rather upset.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I remember hearing a story about some couples going into a party or something, and one of the girls got under the other girl’s dress. They had long dresses on, long formals, and one of the girls hid under the other girl’s long dress to get back in.
All: Yeah.
MR. HAGAMAN: I don’t remember but Bill volunteered to do that the next time….
MR. CARDEN: I can recall once, there was three couples of us having a picnic down on what’s called “G” Road, which was one of the patrol roads that went down to the fence, and we were all sitting there having our picnic and a guard came up and asked to see our badges, so five of us had our badges and one of the girls didn’t have her badge. And we pleaded with the guard to let us have him follow us back and we’d go to her house and she could go into her house and get her badge. But he wouldn’t do that, so he took us down to the guard headquarters, which at the time was in a dormitory, one of the old dormitories that they had here, and the guards, and we had to talk to the desk sergeant you know and he was giving us, “You must carry your badge with you at all times”, and this and that. And the girl was almost in tears. But finally he gave her a pass and checked her name off the master list that they had to make sure she really lived here.
MR. HAGAMAN: They were serious about security.
All: Sure.
MR. HAGAMAN: Had trouble getting my little 12-year-old cousin in because she didn’t have to have a pass until she was 13.
MR. KIELY: And they didn’t believe she was that age? Do you all have any memories of the Museum, in terms of the first time you came to the Museum, how the Museum has changed over the years?
MR. HAGAMAN: I was an apprentice electrician for Dad. I dropped out of school that summer. I worked at the brick warehouses on the east end of town as you come into Oak Ridge, and as we were finishing up on the first one they were setting up the Museum in the end and that was the very first exhibit they had before they had any road exhibits or any move to the Jefferson Cafeteria. And as I remember, there were cutouts, life size cutouts, and I cannot remember the comic characters, but it was like the Bumsteads, or Disney characters, explaining, in the balloons what you were looking at. It was the first time anybody was trying to tell you what they were doing in Oak Ridge, what had been done, and all this. Yes, it has changed a little.
MR. KIELY: Anybody else have any memories of like the first time they came to the Museum or any particular exhibits?
MRS. ARGO: I worked down there for a while. I had to work the day the gates opened. I had to work in the Museum.
MR. KIELY: So you worked in the Museum?
MRS. ARGO: They had the movie star to come down there, Rod Cameron, and Adolph Menjou, Marie MacDonald, Adele Jergens.
MR. HAGAMAN: And Adolph Menjou-
MRS. ARGO: And I thought the Museum was fantastic. I loved it. Very interesting, at the Jefferson Cafeteria. And it seemed to me like there was more to see down there than there is up here because it is so spacious up here. And it wasn’t that way down there.
MR. KIELY: What kind of exhibits to you remember being down there?
MRS. ARGO: The one where you put the hand on that and the hair went everywhere. And they took their exhibits all around the United States. And they had everything in there.
MR. KIELY: Was it heavily visited down there when the gates opened?
MRS. ARGO: Oh there was a lot of people down there, can’t remember how many.
MR. HAGAMAN: The town was so crowded that while we were watching the parade in Jackson Square the fire truck tried to go up Kentucky Avenue and couldn’t make it, on an emergency. Could not get up, could not turn around, just sat there.
MR. CARDEN: It was probably the one they got the picture of, in the parade area, there , there is a fire truck, I believe.
MR. HAGAMAN: Yeah, there was a fire truck in that parade.
MR. CARDEN: Yes, and the Oak Ridge High band was in the parade.
MR. CARDEN: I was a chauffeur for I thought , Marie “The Body” MacDonald, but it turned out it was Marie “The Body” MacDonald’s clothes.
MR. KIELY: You got close-
MR. CARDEN: Oh yes, there was four of us guys, and we were all assigned to different stars, and we’d get a call to meet them at a certain area, like maybe the High School Auditorium, and somebody would come out and-
MR. HAGAMAN: Did you get to keep anything?
MR. CARDEN: No, but practically all the happenings then, we missed them because we were on call. But I did get to see some of the parade, right at the very last part of the festivities there. It was still interesting.
MRS. HAGAMAN: I didn’t live here at the time, I lived in Ohio, and I saw the opening of the gates thru Life Magazine.
MR. KIELY: What was that like?
MRS. HAGAMAN: That was really interesting, to pick up Life Magazine, and see your hometown. Some of my friends. I didn’t come back to Oak Ridge until 1962, so that was the first time I saw the Museum, when it was down in Jefferson. It was very interesting.
MR. CARDEN: I think an interesting thing about our school was concerned was the transition that took place. The day I registered in to the high school there were 13 of us coming in that day and 26 going out. And I said, that’s a lot of people coming and going. And the registrar said that’s the way it is almost every day right now. So there was a time in 1946 that, I didn’t realize such a transition was taking place. I thought most of the people that came here were going to stay here.
MR. HAGAMAN: You would have still been in school when Eastman laid off.
MR. CARDEN: I was.
MR. HAGAMAN: 11 or 12,000 people.
MR. CARDEN: 22 I think I heard. 1947, that was when we had a mass exodus from the Y-12 plant.
MR. HAGAMAN: I thought we’d been out of here.
MR. CARDEN: People’s feelings were, we weren’t going to be here very long. After the war, some said 5 years, some said 10. Never dreamed I’d have been here as long as I have been. But I’m certainly glad I have. It’s been very good to us. We’ve all enjoyed it.
MR. KIELY: I’d like to thank you all for spending time with us. Is there anything that anyone else would like to add to the discussion or something you might have forgotten?
MR. CARDEN: Well, I was working for the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies and I started in September of 1949 so I was down like where Mary was at the Museum, on a fairly frequent time, but I worked in what was called the Special Training Division which was held in the brick building behind the Castle on the Hill at the time and the Museum, like Mary said, was very interesting because you got to see some the aspects, some of the scientific things that were involved here.
MR. KIELY: That was a real interest to the residents as well as to the people who were traveling thru who came to see what Oak Ridge was like.
MR. HAGAMAN: I would like to thank you for taking this down, and also like to reserve, and maybe be called on the next 50th.
MR. KIELY: I hope we can do that. Thank you very much, we appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]